Bay 12 Games Forum

Spoiler: idiocy (click to show/hide)

you know what, for now I give up. No matter what the fuck I try, I fucked this entire story up. im sorry that I never made this undesrtandable by anyone, and im sorry that this entire system became shit the moment I laid it out before you guys. Im just gonna fucking end this here or now, or whatever, I dont fucking know. Everything is shit anyways. Im asorry for having wssted your god damn time.

Disregard me, I am having a horrible, horrible day. I am sorry for this stupid outburst.

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*sigh*


retrieve the sack with all my stuff in it (including the sandwich) from the area where I first saw the planks with drawn on faces.
ponder where I got the sandwich currently in my hands from.

((to be clear, Dex, please do not blame yourself for other people's choices and actions. if others want to be stupid, that is not your fault.))

Motion - remove Gaiaweapons from the petition Queue, place it in Committee status. all deities involved in the petition may modify the petition at will. once a majority of deities involved Put up for Vote a matching version of the petition, it is returned to the petition Queue and voted on as normal.

Does anyone Second this motion?

if motion is Seconded, put it up for a vote, if a majority says Aye put the motion into effect. if a majority Nays the motion it has no effect. if a majority is not reached after 3 days, the motion fails automatically. motions should never have physical effects on the universe, and are simply to handle weird unplanned for stuff involving the way we handle petitions.

GM - is this system acceptable?

note: motions use different keywords from petitions so that there will be no confusion if you have voting on a motion and a petition going on at the same time. they shouldn't interfere with each other.

WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT...
the automanip on the plasma projector for the containment field works on a Moving Target?!?
how??? it's not like the user of the gun holds perfectly still while the plasma ball is in the air after all.
shouldn't it run into the same problem i did when i wanted to be able to maneuver the plasma around via automanip?


ok, since the plasma projector uses a variation of automanip for the containment field, and those have a lifespan problem, i'll simply use the directional containment field/beam + prism field/beam from last time, quoting the relevant part for convenience:

look up various forms of immaterial containment and/or shielding fields developed. particularly look for methods of containing either heat or plasma effects that do not require surrounding the effect but instead curve their shielding around it, probably by having an array of devices clustered together, a few forming the shield itself, initially aimed mildly off-center, and the rest forming modifying fields that act similarly to prisms upon the shield effect, causing it to curve  as it passes the target area, forming a hollow sphere.

here, let me give you a visual, although i'm not any good at drawing:
the more traditional repulse field (aka, a simple directional magnetic field) is optional if the shields can be crossed as shown in the image, however if they interfere with each other then uncrossing them and having the repulse field in the middle will be needed to protect the near side.
the prism is actually the entire area between the brown lines, i left them open to show what happens inside that area.
as shown, the far side will in general be much weaker, and this setup will have a lot of leakage into the area behind the fireball, probably interfering with electronics in the area.

this kind of design will have a significant problem traveling long ranges, but i'm not trying for anything like the long-range-artillery the plasma projector qualifies as. the nice thing about it is it shouldn't require any automanips to maintain the plasma ball, and it should be able to be moved in any direction by slowly adjusting the emitters' angles. it also simply uses a conventional power supply instead of needing the special batteries of manips, although it will probably be a bit of a power hog.

the plasma itself will be generated via automanip, but will not be contained or controlled by it.

explore anomaly, use extreme caution.

move to edge of anomalous zone, do not enter it
analyze zone from closer range

Well, I think I'm going to officially count out of the talking, as I realize that this is of a breed of player actions that is the cause of a few other MSPA deaths.

Seriously, as players, we should stop playing this kinda stuff. It just ends up frustrating most GMs. The GM here presented the slap-down in an interesting fashion, but that ended up intriguing us more then anything. So, we should probably stop this because it's just not healthy for a suggestion game. And this is a really neat game.

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it shouldn't have to do any maintenance work actually. the only reason for the automanip was to insert the heat/plasma into the containment sphere, maintenance and movement is handled by the sphere itself. the automanip only has to turn on for a single burst. the reason i needed an automanip for it was to be able to generate it is because the way i was building the containment sphere, there wasn't a safe way to insert the plasma into the containment field.

i had forgotten about the plasma projector over there, that actually makes things a ton easier. i noticed that the plasma projector's problem isn't maintaining the plasma over distance and time, but getting it to hit the target at long ranges because of the slow speed it has for a projectile. essentially the system i'm trying to build could piggyback off the plasma projector tech and is basically using a plasma projector plasma ball with an immaterial leash on it. the low end speed mentioned in the plasma projector entry (90 MPH) is plenty fast for my purposes.

and i do expect the fireball to degrade over time, but since i'm keeping a permanent leash on it. i'm pretty sure the aforementioned leash will help reinforce the containment field and keep the loss to a minimum, and even without this reinforcement the plasma projector's field listed in the armory was able to keep the plasma ball effective for extended periods (90 MPH + extreme range means signifigant travel time means long duration).

also, i'm fine with a much smaller fireball than the plasma projector, reducing it from basketball sized to a simple 5 inch diameter, or possibly smaller (down to a minimum of 2 inches, although 3 is much preferable) if necessary. that has got to greatly reduce the demands on the system. i also dont need the extreme range of the plasma projector, limiting it to a maximum of medium range is just fine with me. additionally the plasma projector is capable of having multiple shots in the air at one time, i only want one fireball active at a time.

also, now that you pointed that out (seriously, thank you so much for pointing out the plasma projector, that's a major help here) i'd like to look into using the plasma projector's firing mechanism to generate the ball, instead of an automanip, and see if that reduces size/price/power requirements, if it is the more efficient generation system, use that instead.

i do expect this system to drain power over time, the projectors for the containment field / leash are going to be pretty much constantly on after all. so:

test the maximum duration of a single fireball under this system, assume infinite power available to the containment field but no additional power to the automanip/plasma projector firing mechanism after the fireball has been generated.
test power drain rate of the system, look into a generator/battery system that starting from a fully charged state can generate and maintain a constant state of having one fireball active, replacing them as they dissipate, for 1 hour, then 4 hours, then 12 hours. (i think this system will be most efficient with a generator attached because of the long duration i'm working with here, if not, just use a battery and list the price tag and normal recharge time please)
test how long it takes for the generator part of the power system to fully recharge the battery from a fully drained state, without outside help.

oh, and what color is the plasma ball? can i make it blue?

i think you missed the spoiler? that contains the details of petition 10.